The Newest Ghost
by The Cry-Wank Kid
Summary: One-shot Drabble set right after Violet died. Tate finds a comfort he thought he'd lost forever. Nora contemplates her own existence in Murder House. Pure Tora cry-wank, don't say I didn't warn you.


**Sorry if there are some errors in this. I'm tired right now. But I had a special request tonight for a Nora hug! ;)**

* * *

Tate tucked the newest ghost into her bed tightly, gently arranging her wet blonde hair on the pillow so that it wouldn't make her cold. The small girl was already sleeping, exhausted from pills.

Tate stroked her shoulder, feeling delicate bones through the fleece pajama top he'd put her in to replace her soaked dress. She looked so vulnerable. He'd been vulnerable once, hadn't he?

He kissed her forehead. "Goodnight, Violet," he whispered.

* * *

In the basement he passed the crawl space in which he'd hidden her body. It was a clumsy hiding spot, born of haste and desperation. He hadn't wanted it to be the first thing she saw when she came back; he knew first-hand how traumatic that was. That was seventeen years ago, of course, and he'd been different then-a fragile child, hurting, somebody's darling. What was he now?

The sight of the passage and the ensuing memory made Tate's non-existent stomach lurch. He hunched over involuntarily, hands on his knees, dry-heaving violently. If he ate, he'd have been throwing up all over the basement floor.

When he fishished, he looked up and was surprised to see Nora looking at him with love and worry in her eyes. Tate wiped his watery eyes, straightening. It was the look she used to give him back before she started disappearing into herself, forgetting everything, forgetting him. The past few years without her had been so lonely for him.

"Tate..." she muttered, sounding for once like the mother figure he'd known, "My goodness, child, you're soaking." She reached to push back the wet bangs plastering the boy's forehead. "What is all this? Are you ill?"

Tate shivered. In his desperation to dry off and warm up Violet he'd completely forgotten his own soaked hair and clothes, the snot on his sleeves, the vomit on his sweater.

His face crumpled at the kindness in Nora's voice. "No... just sad," he managed just before the floodgates opened. She had such a knack for doing that. Her slightest loving gaze could break instantly through the steeliest of his resolves, forcing him to cry when he needed to. Tate wasn't sure if he loved it or hated it.

He only let himself sob for about thirty seconds. He tried to wipe the tears away with his sleeve, but it was wet, too.

"Come," said Nora.

* * *

Tate sat in the spare upstairs bedroom while Nora made a cup of tea for him. The sleeves of the thermal shirt she'd made him change into were too long, and he pulled them over his hands and bunched them up over his wrists in a mindless game, waiting. He remembered the room. Of course it was different now-the bed he sat on was not the same one she read him to sleep in that awful day, and gone was the tacky, comforting faux-country decor of Constance and Larry. The room was crowded now with cold, modern things and unpacked boxes, things the Harmons hadn't gotten around to organizing yet.

Tate shook his head. He had resented Constance and despised Larry. Why was he suddenly nostalgic for the remnants of their presence? He knew, though, instantly. He was nostalgic for the past, for nearly twenty years prior when the world outside was still one that he understood.

He stared at the wall, hoping to hold the tears back. Crying had always been how his body processed strong emotions, much to his chagrin. Nora was the only person who had ever seemed to understand that. She'd held him and let him cry until he was good and finished. Everyone else always seemed to try and rush him out of it. Constance in particular was never fond of his sobbing jags.

When Nora went away there was no one left to cry to, so Tate just didn't. He invented a sociopathic persona for himself, acting violent and fucking with the other ghosts in the house. Occasionally when he just couldn't help it he would crawl up the attic stairs and cradle Beauregard, sobbing in vain into his brother's shoulder in a desperate grasp for family, for warmth. Afterward he never felt better-just headachey and spent and with all the sadness still right where he'd left it.

Nora returned, handing Tate his tea. The warm mug felt good in his hands. Even in dry clothes, he was still cold. He sipped the tea absently while Nora rubbed at his damp hair with a towel.

"What on Earth did you get into...?" she mused, more to herself, really, than to him.

Tate cringed. "You know Violet?"

Nora put the towel down and sat next to him. "That dear little girl?"

Violet was no little girl, but Tate didn't correct her.

"Yeah, Violet," he said. "The daughter of the people who moved in here... she died tonight."

Nora stroked Tate's back. In an instant the tears returned, dripping from the angles of his face onto the lap of his plaid pajama pants. He resolved to just talk through them. Nora listened, periodically offering up the long sleeve of her dress so that Tate could dry his eyes.

"I tried to save her, Nora," he cried. "I did... I saw that she was dying and I tried to make her stop, I tried to take her to the shower and make her throw up all the pills she took, but I was too late. She died in my _arms_. Do you know how awful that is, to have that happen?"

_I do indeed,_ thought Nora, but she bit her tongue. That was the last thing he needed to think about right now.

Tate sniffled loudly. Nora held out her sleeve again.

"God, I'm sorry. I know you'd think I'd want that. And like, I know I've been kind of a jerk lately. But I didn't want this, I swear I didn't. I wanted her to live, even if it meant that I'd be sad..."

Tate shivered. Nora handed him a sweater from the pile of his clothes on the bed. He pulled it on over the other shirt so that the thermal's long sleeves stuck out the bottom of the sweater's cuffs.

"My Tate... I'm so sorry. But what's done is done. Maybe now you can be together."

She thought the idea might cheer him up, but instead he lifted those awkward sleeves to his face and sobbed horribly into them.

"That's the thing," he managed, though she could barely understand him. "She doesn't want that. I saw... I saw that she'd been sad lately and so I wrote 'I love you' on her chalkboard thinking that it'd make her feel better... But she saw it and she killed herself..."

"My darling, you have to breath."

"I'm trying..."

"Try harder. You'll make yourself ill again crying in this fashion."

"I'm trying!"

After a moment he composed himself slightly and looked at her. "Can we lie down?" he asked.

* * *

Tate stretched his 5'11 frame across the legnth of the small bed, kicking the last of his clothing onto the floor. He nestled his face into the crook of Nora's shoulder the way he had when he was little. He hadn't asked to be comforted in this way since then, Nora realized. Even the day he died, he'd taken no issue with laying down alone.

He held her tightly, trying to cry out all the trauma of the night into the collar of Nora's dress. The socialite's ghost was slightly vain, prone to fits if someone so much as coughed in her general direction. Tate was the only person she ever would have allowed to cry so messily all over her nice clothing.

She didn't quite understand it. This boy, this strange child of the late twentieth century who seemed not to comb his hair, who dressed in a manner that baffled her-no justice it did to his handsomeness-who for some ungodly reason seemed _never_ to carry a handkerchief... he was special to her. He even looked a bit like her own child, she thought, his fair hair curling slightly, his face sweet and open, his nose slightly upturned. He even shared her uncontrollable tendency towards tears-a trait even more unfortunate in a young man, thought Nora, but what could be done?

She wondered for an instant if Thaddeus might have looked like him, might have been like him, had he grown up. She pushed the thought from her mind.

Eventually Tate's sobbing quieted and he fell asleep in Mrs. Nora's arms, his heart all cried out onto hers like it had been so many times before. She held his sleeping form for what felt like several hours, one of his legs thrown carelessly over her, his breathing slightly congested from crying. She stared at the ceiling until she couldn't take it anymore and got up carefully, covering Tate with a blanket.

She walked quietly to Violet's room. She entered to find the girl still sleeping, her sweet face pallid and her messy hair dark gold. Nora stood over her closely. She might have been pretty, she realized, had she pin-curled her hair and worn clothing that fit. Maybe those things weren't done anymore.

Nora's heart ached. The world outside had gone on without her, and she no longer understood the first thing about it, or the strange new children who inhabited it. She was just stuck here, atoning. For what she wasn't even sure anymore.

The girl's face was tear-stained. The sight made Nora sniffle slightly. The unfathomable children, she thought, they love one another, they weep and they hurt just like we did. She didn't know if her tears at this realization were of sorrow or of beauty.

She stretched a bejeweled hand out over Violet's plain, messy visage, shaking slightly and hesitating a moment before stroking the girl's hair.


End file.
